


Solstice

by lferion



Series: The Grey Book of Erebor [8]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Astronomy, Dwarves, Gen, HobbitAdvent, Solstice, Triple Drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Hobbit Advent day 14, prompt: Midnight</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solstice

* * *

Dwarves may live under ground, beneath stone, in deep places where the lights of sun and moon and stars do not directly shine, but that does not mean they do not know or fail to understand the working of the world, how it moves in the greater dance of the heavens. They study light as well as fire, glass as well as steel, and that they see so well in darkness means the more they perceive of fainter gleams, reflected or within. 

Dwarves know the quarters of the spinning year: the balance points of spring and fall when day and night are equal, the longest and the shortest days. They measure months by moon-phase, marked in relation to the sun. There are astronomers among them, and those for whom there is delight in numbers, shapers of lenses, makers of gears and wheels and gimbals that allow an eye to track a single mote of light across the sky from rise to set. There is beauty in that stately progress, the interplay of the fixed stars and the moving, of moon and sun and Arda round, of eclipse and conjunction.

And even those unstudied in the stars know the sun will rise again each morn; that the longest night will yet give way to dawn. But knowing does not obviate relief nor diminish celebration at the ordered turning of the world, at the return of light and warmth from depth of winter night, or the promise in the twilit summer night of long and golden days.

Let midnight come, be heralded with song and marked with bells and trumpets, drums and gongs. The longest night and shortest bright with fire and rejoicing be, with festival and feast, for new day come, for making made, and for all good that might be.


End file.
